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Please Help me Figure Out This Pastry

I happened to be in the Sheepshead Bay area the other day for work so I headed over to the Fruit and Vegetable Market on Avenue Z.

This is my favorite place to buy fruit in the city because they have such a huge selection of hard to find stuff and the quality and freshness of their fruit is really hard to beat.

Not to mention they have a ton of Russian candy in bulk so I always come in and try a couple different ones each visit!

So after picking up some beautiful ripe plums and a couple pieces of candy I decided to go across the street to the newly reopened Gourmet Food Market. They closed for renovations over a year ago and I was happy to see their place looked pretty goo. They had much more space than before and it seemed a little nicer.

I did a quick walk around and started to head out the door when something in the bakery case caught my eye.

Peering through the glass, I see this giant pastry that looks like a cross between a macaroon and a bombolone!!

I go in for a closer look, and see a sign in front that says it's called a Margarita. A Margarita?? That' really odd.

I ask two different store clerks if they can tell me more about this ginormous pastry but no one seems to know what it's about.

Well now I'm really intrigued so I buy one and head back to work to open it up.

I feel a little silly cracking into such a giant sweet before lunchtime but no one seems to notice or care. The outside top is dusted with powdered sugar and the ring outside seems to be covered in some sort of crushed nuts.

As I crack it open I realize the top and bottom "macaroon" parts are actually just made of a light meringue.

Inside things are a little bit crazier though! There were multiple nooks of nougat here and pockets of cream there, but no uniform layers. I wasn't sure where to begin and how to go about eating it.

The one layer tasted somewhat like an almond paste while the other tasted a little bit like hazelnuts and honey. The whole thing was texturally awesome as the meringue outside crisped and melted into the creamy sweet paste inside and crunchy chopped nuts on the edges.

For $1.99 this gargantuan pastry was a steal and so different than anything I have had before! I probably would have eaten the whole thing right there, but about halfway through my stomach begin to churn a little from eating so much sugar.

I still had a ton of work to do so I decided I should be responsible and curb my dessert eating until the end of the day.

I tried to look up some research on where this pastry originated and exactly what it's made of but I had no luck finding anything. Possibly they had the name down wrong? I would love to know more about it.

I am planning to go back in a couple of weeks so I'll stop by again but if anyone has any ideas, or has eaten this mammoth treat before, I'd love to know more about it. My stomach will thank you immensely!!